Associate Professor of Physics Aileen O'Donoghue is serving as a "guide to the skies" for readers of Adirondac magazine.

O'Donoghue has been the author of a column called Mountain Skies in the magazine of the Adirondack Mountain Club for the past year. In the column, she not only advises readers about what will be happening skyward in the coming months, but also offers information about how constellations got their names, tips for viewing and other bits of wisdom.

Her most recent column, in the November/December 1999 issue, notes that the Vernal Equinox is just east of a "ringlet" of stars called the Great Square. "When the sun is at this position in its yearly trip around the sky, it is the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere and the penguins of Antarctica are settling in for another long, dark night....Aries the ram with stars Hamal and Saratan is just north of Saturn. My students tend to see a hockey stick rather than a ram, and take its presence in the early winter sky as a sign that hockey cosmically important."